


An Abundance of Aloths

by LunaRowena



Series: Watcher Amaryllis [5]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Gen, Humor, multiple aloths, multiple watchers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21786286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaRowena/pseuds/LunaRowena
Summary: “We all touched something we shouldn’t have, and now we seem to have… an abundance of Aloths.”
Relationships: Aloth Corfiser & The Watcher
Series: Watcher Amaryllis [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1183214
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16
Collections: Pillars of Eternity Prompts Weekly





	An Abundance of Aloths

**Author's Note:**

> For Pillars Prompts Weekly #0075: Double

Aloth and Amaryllis stared up at the Engwithan machine built around an admittedly small adra pillar.

Aloth sighed. “Why were the Engwithans so enthusiastic about building temples on small islands in the middle of nowhere?”

“Going where the adra is, I’m guessing.” Amaryllis cocked her head, studying the contraption.

Aloth grabbed her arm and spun the pale elf to face him. “You’re not actually thinking about touching it, are you?”

“Well…” she grinned sheepishly, tugging at the end of her braid. “I at least want to know what it does.”

Aloth rolled his eyes. “What happened the last time we touched a strange machine?”

“Our souls have mostly recovered.” Amaryllis shook herself out of his grasp and took a few more steps closer to the machine.

Aloth stepped up after her. “You’re still missing a large portion of your soul to Eothas!”

Amaryllis squinted at the controls. “I’m pretty sure that’s not what this one does.”

“How sure is ‘pretty sure?’”

Amaryllis didn’t answer, walking closer to the machine. It hummed in what he chose to interpret as an ominous manner.

“Amaryllis!” he hurried up behind her.

“Aloth, if you’re worried, you can wait outside with the others.”

Aloth squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

She turned and reached out to squeeze his hand. “I’d still feel better if–maybe you should stand back.”

He squeezed back. “I’ll only be a few steps behind you.”

Amaryllis stepped up to the controls and took in a big breath. “Some of the words are a bit rubbed out–probably the crumbling stone–but I think it’s some kind of transportation mechanism?”

Aloth grasped his hands together behind his back. “All the more reason not to touch it!”

“I wonder if it opens a portal like at Poko Kohara. We could at least peer through it.”

“I strongly object to this plan–”

But she had already turned the dial. The machine whirred to life, electricity sparking along the copper coils. A white light grew out of the center of the adra pillar.

Aloth rushed forward to try to pull her back, to do something, but the white light washed over them both.

Aloth collided into Amaryllis and they stumbled forward from the momentum. Aloth held tight to her and tried to blink back the light. He tripped over a loose brick on the uneven ground sending them both sprawling downward. Shaking his head, he looked up at their surroundings. They were on some kind of ruined platform but the horizon, the sky, it was all a white void. And–

“What? Hello!”

–and they weren’t alone.

The woman who had spoken, a pink orlan with long, wavy hair, jumped up from her perch on a ruined column. “Did you come through the ruin, too? Were any of our companions there? What were you doing out in the middle of nowhere? I guess that’s a stupid question because we were out in the middle of nowhere… what.” She turned to stare at Aloth, held up a finger, turned to the dark haired man with her, then turned back. “Huh.”

The dark haired man stared at Aloth. Aloth stared back. Except for the large poleaxe strapped across his back, he looked disturbingly like… himself.

Amaryllis stood up, brushing herself off. “So sorry for us to intrude like this. Lovely to meet you both. Amaryllis Alfwyn, and this is my compatriot, Aloth Corfiser.”

The orlan woman stared her down. “Really? Because this,” she gestured to the man beside her, “Is Aloth Corfiser.”

Aloth pulled himself to his feet, laughing nervously. “Well, I’m pretty certain that I’m Aloth Corfiser–” he cut off as he saw the scepter at the woman’s belt. He pulled up his own Keybreaker Scepter.

Her eyebrows raised as she pulled out her own to compare. “Well, I’ll be damned. Two Corfisers.” She turned to her own Aloth, swinging her arms open. “Do you know what we can do with that?”

The tips of other Aloth’s ears turned red. “Artemisia!”

“I was just gonna say we can throw three fireballs at once. Do you know how much fire that is? We could probably get temperatures up to–”

Amaryllis coughed politely. “It’s a lot of fire, yes. How did you two get here? Wherever here is?”

Artemisia swung back around to look at Amaryllis. “Don’t know where here is, but touched some Engwithan machine–”

“That I told you not to touch,” other Aloth interjected.

“–and we wound up here. It’s been a bit,” Artemisia finished.

“The same thing happened to us,” Amaryllis said.

Artemisia tugged on the tip of her ears. “So we’re probably in some alternate dimension and we’re crossing the streams of parallel universes.”

“Of course,” said Aloth.

“So how do we get back?” asked Amaryllis.

Artemisia shrugged. “I have no idea. Otherwise we wouldn’t still be here.” Her eyes narrowed and she looked back and forth between Aloths. “I wonder what would happen if you two touched each other.”

“With the potential for an explosive result from two universes colliding, I’d rather not find out,” said Aloth.

Artemisia opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a flash of bright light and two more people stumbling out.

A meadow folk woman with red hair dusted herself off. “Great.” She turned to her companion. “You alright, Aloth?”

“Wonderful,” Aloth, other Aloth, and third Aloth said in unison.

The woman looked up, her eyes rapidly glancing between everyone. “What’s going on here?”

“Collision of parallel universes,” Artemisia said.

“In Aedyran?” said the new woman.

“We all touched something we shouldn’t have, and now we seem to have… an abundance of Aloths,” said Amaryllis.

“And you all are…?”

“Artemisia Maiu.”

“Amaryllis Alfwyn.”

“Lillian Teylecg.”

“What?” Amaryllis blinked.

Artemisia stared “What.” She turned to third Aloth. “Edér’s a woman in your universe?”

“What? No,” said Lillian. “We’re married.”

“What?”

Artemisia turned to other Aloth. “I am so giving Edér a hard time about this when we get back.”

“How do we get back?” asked Lillian.

“We don’t know,” said Amaryllis.

There was another flash of light and a savannah folk woman in heavy armor and another Aloth fell through. 

Aloth stared at the newest Aloth. They all wore the same armor, but this fourth Aloth was wearing a headdress that looked remarkably like Thaos’s.

“Okay what is happening here–” Lillian started, but in another flash of light she and her Aloth were gone.

“Is that good or bad?” asked Amaryllis.

“So… either someone on the other side pulled them back, or this place has a limit on how many it can hold,” said Artemisia.

“That’s good, right?” said Amaryllis.

“If it’s the second, we hope they got sent back instead of… elsewhere,” said other Aloth.

“Wouldn’t you,” Amaryllis gestured to Artemisia and her Aloth, “have been sent back if it was the second?”

“It could be a stack rather than a queue,” said Aloth. “Last in, first out instead of first in, first out.”

The savannah folk woman just stared back and forth between them all.

Artemisia tugged on her ears again. “We’re going to be here forever, then, if my alternate selves keep being stupid.”

“I don’t feel like I’m an alternate you,” said Amaryllis.

“Why else would you be with Aloth–” Another flash of bright light and Artemisia and her Aloth were gone.

Now it was just Amaryllis, Aloth, the savannah folk woman, and… Aloth was still going to think of him as “fourth Aloth.”

“Well,” Aloth said. “Since it’s just us now, and no one else has shown up, that seems to indicate that something else is pulling us away rather than a capacity limit.”

“So we hope the others come in and ‘find’ us,” said Amaryllis.

Another flash of bright light, and Aloth barely had enough time to make out a wood elf woman with brown, curly hair and another Aloth before light completely surrounded his vision. The world lurched, and next thing he knew they were back in the ruins, Pallegina, Xoti, and Tekēhu staring at them. He never thought he would be so glad to see Tekēhu.

“Thank you for the timely intervention.” Amaryllis straightened her vest.

“What happened?” Xoti asked.

“In all universes, Watchers have a habit of touching things they shouldn’t,” said Aloth.

Amaryllis reached out and squeezed his hand. “And in all universes, Watchers have a trusty Aloth to watch out for them.”


End file.
